WiZIQ offers free #iPad enabled online #classrooms for teachers

Virtual classrooms are a technology in high demand as they allow any trainer or teacher to reach an international audience at any given moment. For the free, online course on mobile learning - MobiMOOC, we will also be using WiZIQ and the nice thing is, since last week any teacher linked to an academic institution can now register for a free teacher account. So that opens up possibilities for every teacher located in low resource environments. For those interested in trying out or applying for a free academic, teacher account, have a look here: http://www.wiziq.com/academic/ .

WiZIQ has been on the market for a long time and in the past I explored the WiZIQ options. Due to organizational options, WiZIQ was not a central teacher option, but ... as time went by WiZIQ started to come into the picture again. As such the educational department of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, who has students and partners around the world is taking a second look into the WiZIQ functionalities. In the meantime I am going ahead with it in MobiMOOC.

The reason for considering WiZIQ for MobiMOOC was based on four needs:

• it should be accessible by a wide audience (differences in bandwidth, infrastructure and digital skills), 
• it had to be learner and teacher friendly
• it had to have at least some mobile options (WiZIQ now has an iPad app functionality) 
• it had to offer recording options. 

WiZIQ has a nice set of options: white board, breakout rooms, polls, screen-sharing, content uploads, public and private classrooms... and 15 GB storage for recordings. Once MobiMOOC has ended I will gladly share an update on its functionalities and how it went throughout the course.

WiZiQ session about three mobile cases

Last Friday 12 December 2008 at 4:00 PM (GMT + 1) I gave a presentation in collaboration with the renowned International Training Centre (ITC) in Turin, Italy. If you are interested the online session I gave on three mobile cases in development and developed at ITM can be viewed here.

In order to view it, you need to make yourself a member of WiZiQ (= free) and you need to sign in to WiZiQ in order to get permission to view the session. The session allows you to hear what was said and which questions were raised.

After you have registered (or if you are already a member) surf to this link and click on 'view recording'.

If you are interested in the powerpoint, but you do not feel like going through the session (60 minutes), then you can just look at the powerpoint I used for this presentation. If you want to you can also download it and test out all the links that are mentioned on it. The presentation is an updated version of a previous one with more relevant links.

During the session I mention other mobile resources that I blogged about in the past, you can find all the posts here.

Mobile Learning Three Cases And Discussion

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile learning developing countries)

The session went well, but I always find it a pity that I cannot immediately show the things I talk about. Sometimes the questions are related to not having seen the mobile methods that I describe or not having felt the accessibility (or lack of) of mobile courses. I should think about bridging this gap in a future session.

Join the live Wiziq session on 3 mobile cases in low resource settings with discussion

This Friday 12 December 2008 at 4:00 PM (GMT + 1) I will be giving a presentation in collaboration with the International Training Centre (ITC) in Turin, Italy.

This virtual classroom session is part of the Lifelong eLearning session that the International Training Centre of Turin, Italy organises. The session will focus on three mobile cases that were developed (or are in development) at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp, Belgium.

I will try to keep the presentation of the cases to a minimum of 15 - 20 minutes, allowing the international participants to ask questions and thus all of us can collaborate in this session of 60 minutes.
If possible, please use a head-set with microphone. This will enable us all to enhance interactivity and collaboration.

Joining this session is free, but you need to follow a couple of steps:
Do these steps before the start of the session (that way you can make sure you can follow without a problem).

• First you need to 'join for free', by clicking that button on the WiZiQ website ;
• After joining you will receive a mail in which the confirmation code is send (it is send immediately, so if you do not see it pop-up immediately, look at your junk-mail folder):
• login to the wiziq site using your Wiziq username and password;
• click on the link session below to enter the session;
• after checking your audio/video settings, accept the settings;
  
• log-in to the session a couple of minutes in advance. This will allow you to check your microphone and headset.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Session link: http://www.wiziq.com/tutorsession/detail.aspx?id=A701A7F1799B4722ADE616015D0747FB



You can also use this embedded code, but you need to register with Wiziq just the same:

mobile learning: three cases and discussion by Ignatia

Get your own Virtual Classroom

7 places teachers can turn your expertise into cash online today

So building upon the previous post on identity and personal marketing I am adding this very practical way to earn some extra bucks while exploring social media sites and getting cracking with your expertise and softwares for audio/video teaching.

WiZiQ offers public sessions about a lot of topics (basics of Linux, basic German…) and one of the latest public sessions that can be viewed for free (after registering for free as well) is this session:
“7 places teachers can turn your expertise into cash online today” by Meri Aaron Walker (English spoken).

The core of the presentation is to be ‘Thinking seriously while imaging wildly’ as to get new ideas on how to take advantage of the global marketplace as a teacher. Teachers have always added value to a lot of learners, but with the new international connections, teachers are starting to sell their services worldwide. Meri takes the viewer on a tour and points out some of the opportunities teachers can dive into nowadays. Although there are a lot of new opportunities time is a constraint in many cases.

A lot of learners are increasing their online learning time. To prove this dictum, Meri asked the learners from a session to give examples of their number 1 favorite online knowledge marketplace? These were some of the examples that were given (and take a look at these great! Resources):
Learning times
Curriki
WiZiQ
Nicenet
Verbalplanet
LearningPlanet

Here are the 7 organisations that Meri mentions to make money from as an online teacher. If you register yourself for these 7 places you can take start offering your services and start to make money for yourself. These sites are set-up with teachers in mind = people that sell learning products.
If you are an adept of written reports, you can get a copy of the report on which this presentation is based at Meri’s blog. Where you can send your hottest educational question on Web2.0 and you will get a copy of the report for free (38 p report = ok deal):

freeIQ
Social networking site on which people sell the information they know something about. (like DVD’s on how to train for basketball, how to repare your car …). It works also by putting up your profile (only a profile, you do not need a website or similar). You can post audio, video, pdf-files and you can give them for free or ask money for them.

LivePerson (used to be Kasamba)
Give advice in all areas of expertise, to give counseling/tutoring/technical programs...
With an interesting profiling section: you chose your area of expertise and your profile connects immediately to a per minute charge if people want to connect to you. This is based on a rigourous process. With a widget to put on your social networking pages. (23% for livePerson).

Mindbites
Especially focussed on tiny video lessons, so mainly a self-publishing portal connected to a social market place. The videos are linked to credits (1 credit is 1 $ 60). Membership for mindbites is free and they have a great training program on how to edit a 60 seconds promo video. The first 60 seconds of your video lesson is free for all learners, so that interested parties can check out what the video will be like. (a bit like the incomparable Lynda.com videos).
What is interesting on this site is that you can give the mindbites the possibility to donate your money to your favorite sharity.

Current
A video site (Al Gore site J ) More educational content than youtube. Content that is posted in Current is linked to direct.tv, warner… so what current offers all users is if you start posting your videos, if you express your views on camera, current gives you instruments to improve your audio and video. If you video is chosen by the current-editors, you will get money for them.

Revver.com
This site pays you per person that is watching your video. So this can add a bit to your income.

Metacafe.com
This site also pays you per person that is watching your video.

Skype prime
A special division of skype, that allows people to connect to you through skype (paid by the minute) to get access to your expertise.
(similar is Wengo (more European and Middle East))

Teachers pay teachers
Free membership. You can search and buy or sell materials that are based on your specialist topics. 30 day free trial period for you selling. So you can see if there is (29 dollar annual fee to become a member). Paid out on a quarterly basis. This site is being used extensively by home teaching parents.

We are teachers
Free social profiling with a knowledge market place (video, audio…). Teachers that are sharing their expertise and that exchange specialist knowledge. Nice stuff: pageturning widget.

Of course what gets to me is whether or not I should ask money for any expertise I might have. Some days I feel like I should, at other days I feel that knowledge should be free to all and should be dispersed to all at no cost. Most of the time I am promoting the second option, but now and again I see what my bank account look like and I am in trouble with my ethical principles.
Thank you very much Meri Aaron Walker!

follow up on ITC presentation about mobile projects and discussion

In follow-up of a previous mail here is the multimedia result.

Yesterday I delivered a presentation on three mobile projects through the online classroom tool WiZiQ. The presentation is now available as a recording through this WiZiQ-link. In order to view it you need to register for WiZiQ and afterwards link to the link I mentioned.

The slides of this presentation have been uploaded to Slideshare:

SlideShare"> | View | Upload your own

The WiZiQ-presentation became very lively once the introduction was given. All the participants got their questions out there and Tom Wambeke from ITCilo was a great co-moderator.
We talked about instructional design, mobile strategies, mobile research (or the pioneer stage it is in)... The presentation takes a minute to really start going but I think it is worth a look. The session lasted 75 minutes.
This presentation was part of a framework pilot that focused on Lifelong eLearning for an international audience. After hearing feedback from all the participants (Bahama's, Chicago, ...) it became clear that this pilot will know a successful follow-up.

A couple of links of topics that came up during the discussion:
Quick mobile transformation from websites into mobile sites: http://www.mofuse.com/
standards for mobile development, you can read a blogpost on how to recode a successful html-based course into a mobile course.
How to make slides more attractive: with beyond bulletpoints.

Thanks to all the participants and Tom especially!

In relation to the SCoPE seminar on social media in research I am currently facilitating, I have planned a live session. So let’s get together and exchange ideas live on social media that is used in research, I have set up a session through WiZiQ.

After an intro of about 20 minutes in which I will give a short overview of the big outlines on social media and how it is linked to research, the floor will be completely opened to discuss possible thoughts and questions you might have. These questions can be the basis of discussion threads during the ongoing seminar in SCoPE.

Practical:
The session is planned for Thursday 8 May
12 PM Halifax, Nova Scotia time = ADT;
8 AM Vancouver, British Columbia time = PDT;
5 PM Brussels, Belgium time = CEST;
If you are not sure of your time zone, you can look it up at the World Clock.

You can access the online session here.

On WiZiQ
WiZiQ is a free tool. It is an online virtual classroom and allows interactivity (audio/video and chat and 'raising hands', the last feature enables you to ask for the virtual floor. The presenter can give you the floor (= give you the possibility to say something if you have a microphone connected to your computer).

To participate in this session, you need to register for WiZiQ.
Once you are registered you can access all the sessions for free, BUT you need to be signed in to be able to open the sessions!
This session is audio/video enabled, which means you can use a headset with microphone. This will enable you to give audio comments if you ask for the floor by raising your virtual hand.

Technical tips:

• it is a good idea to surf to the link a couple of minutes before the session starts. This allows you to test your audio/video devices.
• Please keep in mind that you need a headset with microphone if you are planning to talk. This enhances the audio quality, open speakers give the microphones a hard time.
• (a small side remark: if you have been using audio/video software during the day (f.e. for camtasia or captivate) and you want to link to WiZiQ, sometimes the settings are intertwined and do not function correctly. In that case you will have to log out and log in again.

Feel free to join!

join a WiZiQ free online session on mobile learning cases + discussion

Next Tuesday (= 6 May at 4.00PM GMT + 1 or 16.00u Brussels, Belgian time) I am giving a small WiZiQ presentation - an online presentation with chat possibility and limited interactivity - on mobile learning.

I will focus on three projects that we do in ITM and which are aimed at low resource settings. This session is organized on request of the renowned International Training Centre of Torino/Turin, Italy who organize a LifeLong learning training course for low-resource settings.

If you want to join this session, you need to register (make yourself a member) of WiZiQ. Once you are a member, you can join this session by clicking on this link.

Feel free to join and add to the discussion on mobile learning. This session will be recorded and will be distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License,

join my free online session on social media: benefits for researchers

With the free online tool Wiziq I have scheduled a session on the personal benefits of social media for researchers. Wiziq is hot, so try it out!

If you are interested, feel free to join me on Thursday 14th February 2008 at 14.00 PM (GMT +1 = Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin) . Language: English (with Flemish accent).

This session is based on a face to face presentation that I gave at ITM earlier this month. On the feedback I got from the attending researchers I have adjusted my presentation a bit to get it more taylored to their needs.
The reason I organised this session was because some researchers at ITM where doubtful of the benefits of social media. This doubt kept them from jumping in. After the face-to-face sessions people got talking and now social media is taking off within ITM's researchers.

What you have to do if you want to attend: register (username and password) and then you have access to all the sessions.

Wiziq is a very easy to use tool for online sessions that enables audio and video (if you want to), has a whiteboard and a content section where the speaker or the participants can draw up or scroll through information (including powerpoints etcetera). The tool is userfriendly and it seems to function well. You can add text, highlight a selection, add images, encircle words ... on the whiteboard. There is a chat available as well. Unlike Elluminate, you cannot raise hands or more of those interactive features for participants, but you can give the floor to participants.

And straight from the press: wiziq can now be added to Moodle.

It is (still) free, betaversion and ... it has potential. Just look at some of the archived sessions for cool international exchange of content.

If you like an indepth review of Wiziq I recommend the blogpost of Vance Stevens.
There is a nice review here from the Teaching college math technology blog. While at their point in time they had trouble loading up content, my content uploaded immediately. Wiziq has a blog with feedback and stories on their development.

Let me know if you want to join, I can immediately add you to the participants list. If you want to help me in moderating everything that is going on, you are more then welcome, it will also enhance the quality of interactivity.
Or if you have any questions about the forthcoming session, ask, I will be more then happy to answer.